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| A PIANO CHRISTMAS
IN THE 1920s
Holiday Music Performed by the top pianists of the 1920s
With performances by Adam Carroll, Elsie Holt, John T. Howard,
Andrei Kmita ,L. Leslie Loth, Fritz Kreisler, Clair & Fairchild,
and Piertro Yon
THE AMPICO PIANO
The name AMPICO, an abb |
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| A PIANO CHRISTMAS
IN THE 1920s
Holiday Music Performed by the top pianists of the 1920s
With performances by Adam Carroll, Elsie Holt, John T. Howard,
Andrei Kmita ,L. Leslie Loth, Fritz Kreisler, Clair & Fairchild,
and Piertro Yon
THE AMPICO PIANO
The name AMPICO, an abbreviation that stood for “American
Piano Company,” was one of the leading manufacturers of reproducing
pianos in the early 20th century. Numerous musical luminaries,
including composers Sergei Rachmaninoff and Fritz Kreisler,
and legendary pianists Arthur Rubinstein and Artur Schnabel
recorded for this musical wonder.
The first true reproducing piano using a perforated paper roll was
patented by Emil Welte, in the United States in 1883. The early
commercial interest in the “Welte Mignon” reproducing piano, in
addition to the already by then long-standing popularity of standard
player pianos lead several firms to take note. The AMPICO
Company bought both the invention and hired the expertise of
engineer Charles Fuller Stoddard. Stoddard had patented his own
reproducing piano design in 1908, and when he joined AMPICO,
the company began manufacturing full reproducing instruments, as
well as an add-on reproducing roll playing mechanism capable of
retrofitting some standard pianos.
It should first be noted that there is a fundamental difference
between the player piano and the reproducing piano. While both
utilize perforated paper rolls to convey the notes and tempo of the
piece to be played, the reproducing piano’s rolls also contain all of
the expressive dynamics. This means that the roll plays the exact
performance that was recorded onto it by the pianist, hence the
name “reproducing.” The perfection of such a piano that could
exactly reproduce an existing (or idealized) performance on a
paper roll was very soon the hi-end, technological/music device
that any affluent music lover would want in his parlor.
By 1916, Stoddard’s AMPICO had reached such a level of sophistication
in design and manufacture, that the company dared hold a
live recital at the Biltmore Hotel in New York City. During the
concert, pianist Leopold Godowsky performed a series of pieces
live, and then let the AMPICO perform the same works for comparison.
The presentation proved both an extremely effective
marketing tool and dramatic means of converting skeptics by
allowing them to hear the reproducing piano’s faithfulness to the
original performance with their own ears. The company later
repeated this concert at Carnegie Hall to a larger audience.
Perhaps, even beyond the palpable and heady thrill of hearing an
exact performance of the era’s most lauded pianists live in one’s
own home, was the possibility that there existed a device in which
the music and memories of bygone days could still be summoned
forth to entertain and entrance on demand with the mere push of
a lever, conjuring the happy spirits of times past, in the midst of an
increasingly indifferent, electric and neon age of instant communication,
stock tickers, automobiles and flying machines, that were, in
just a few short years, rapidly erasing those earlier ages from
existence.
For a time the AMPICO and its direct competitor, Aeolian’s Duo-
Art, vied to sign to their rosters the most well known pianists of
the day specializing in ever y kind of music. Consequently, thousands
of rolls in ever y possible genre were produced by both firms
throughout the teens and twenties. Inevitably, the AMPICO
Company went into receivership at the end of the decade, not only
a victim of the Great Depression, but of radio’s rapid inauguration
as the preferred center of home entertainment. Even the thrill of
having Rachmoninoff or Gershwin perform virtually live in one’s
home, could not compete with the vastly more economical “liveness”
of radio’s airwaves, providing a continuous stream of concerts,
events, and instant information.
CHRISTMAS IN THE 1920s
The first national Christmas tree was electrically lighted in the year
1923 on the White House lawn by President Calvin Coolidge. It
was also President Coolidge who coined the snappy phrase,
“The business of America is business.”
Several factors had a great influence on shaping the American
celebration of Christmas in the twenties. One was the all but universal
use of electricity and the electric light. Electric lights on
Christmas trees had, by the 1920s, completely superseded the
traditional the use of candles. Public lighted display advertising,
holiday-themed store windows, illuminated billboards, as well as
the new strings of cone shaped colored tree lights in the home, all
contributed to giving the celebration of Christmas a new magical
glow and excitement that must have been profound in the century’s
first truly modern decade. Other general forces that certainly
had a direct impact on the Christmas celebration and it’s gift-giving,
was the increased income the booming economy of the twenties
had on the average family’s ability to afford gifts at Christmas
time. Part and parcel with this, was the new recognition of marketing,
advertising and consumer profiling as a quantifiable science,
that, when finely honed, could make almost anyone desire almost
anything.
Yet, for all the glossy electric enhancements or ubiquitous commercialization
of the holiday, perhaps the true measure of the Christmas
experience from any earlier time, can be gleaned from the music
shared during the holiday. The singing and playing of Carols is a tradition
rooted in the Middle Ages, that extends right up to the present
day. This communal tradition found its way into the American homes
of the 19th and 20th century around the family piano – both standard
and mechanical.
AMPICO HOLIDAY ROLLS
A wonderful aspect of the AMPICO holiday rolls released ever y year
throughout the twenties, is that they made extensive use of the
“Medley” format so as to include a great variety of seasonal music
on each roll. Condensing works into medleys also provides a wide
range of different emotions conveyed through music, from joyous
exuberance to reflective reminiscence. The rolls were given quaint
and charming titles like Christmas by the Fireside, Grandmother’s
Christmas, and even A Christmas Eve Fantasy.
In listening to Lyrichord’s A Piano Christmas in the 1920s, one not only encounters
expected and much loved favorites, but also an unanticipated intermingling of romantic and sentimental pieces culled from the annals
of popular songs and ballads. In Grandmother’s Christmas, for example,
one hears a sumptuously arranged holiday medley ranging from
Silent Night and Jingle Bells, to rollicking, renditions of Turkey in the
Straw, Up in a Balloon Boys, and Bicycle Built for Two. The contemporary listener will also encounter, perhaps for the first time, a number of Christmas songs now unfamiliar, but once staples of the Yuletide music menu, such as A Christmas Message and Tomorrow will be Christmas (Track 2), and The Cherry Tree Carol (Track 3), as well as
the elegantly sentimental medley of six rarely heard songs found in
Christmas Greetings 1929 (Track 5), subtitled, Twilight, played by
Adam Carroll.
Throughout the rolls on this recording, the listener will notice an
underlying theme of tempus fugit or the flight of time. While the last
song on the recording, Auld Lang Syne, is still used to usher out the
old and welcome in the New Year, the holiday rolls are infused with
a surprising number of songs like Grandfather Clock, Silver Hairs
Among the Gold, Love’s Old Sweet Song, Memories, and When You and
I Were Young, Maggie, suggesting that the holiday season fostered a
special, almost painful awareness, of aging and mortality. This undercurrent is perhaps most evident in the closing roll, A Christmas Eve Fantasy (Track 11), as a four handed overlay of “chimes,” mark
the significance of time’s ceaseless passage on our collective experience
of the annual holidays.
THOMAS VENTURELLA
As a very young child Thomas Venturella’s first encounter with what
he would later learn was called an “automatic musical instrument”
happened at a county fair where he became mesmerized by the sight
and sounds of a player piano with violin. A sound and experience
he never forgot.
When in high school an uncle purchased an old Wurlitzer upright
player piano and a box of 50 rolls for $50.00. Since this uncle lived
across the street it made visits to this magical machine quite easy
and they were made quite often. Many a summer night the sound of
that old piano and the fabulous songs those old rolls provided could
be heard up and down the streets of that otherwise quite neighborhood.
After college and moving to Manhattan a piano became a priority.
The first piano purchased was a gutted player and it subtlety rekindled
the fires of owning one. The second piano was another
upright but it had the player mechanism in it this time. However, it
was not working but the spool box in this piano said “AMPICO”.
After some intensive research he discovered that the Ampico was
actually a complex and sophisticated recording/player system by
which the performances of the original artists were faithfully reproduced.
Armed with this new information he decided to waste no
more time with the second piano and set out on the quest for a real,
bonafide reproducing piano.
The ownership of one of these magnificent machines became a reality
with the purchase of a 1929 Haines Brothers 5’4” grand, containing
a late Ampico A reproducing system.
THE HAINES BROS. AMPICO
In 1980 Mr. Venturella purchased the piano from a family in Conway,
New Hampshire. They had gotten it from its original owner, a former
neighbor of the New Hampshire couple. When new, the piano was
purchased in Fitchburg, Massachusetts by a gentleman as a wedding
gift for his bride-to-be. With the collapse of the stock market in
1929 and the subsequent Depression followed by World War II this
piano saw little ser vice. It spent many years closed up with rugs
stacked on top. Fortunately it did not suffer the fate that so many
reproducing pianos during the 40’s and 50’s did. These two decades
were particularly hard on these pianos since the “player piano” had
so fallen out of favor with the public. Piano technicians were repeatedly
asked to “take out that stuff ” from players when they were
tuned, and as a result many pianos were gutted and great reproducing
systems scrapped.
While the player mechanism in the Haines Bros. piano was no
longer working, all the parts were there and that was the most
important issue. A little more homework and he found a master
re-builder of the famous Ampico. This gentleman by the name of
Fred Streicher of Brooklyn, NY lovingly and faithfully rebuilt the
reproducing system and when finished, it played as perfectly as if it
had just come from the American Piano Company itself.
Unfortunately Mr. Streicher is no longer with us, but his memory
and exquisite craftsmanship live on.
THE TRACKS
With the exception of the roll played on Track 1 by an unknown
pianist, each of the other ten tracks were arranged and played, and
in some cases composed, by known and outstanding artists of the
early 20th century. Three of the rolls were arranged (Tracks 4, 5
and 7) by the very gifted and prolific Adam Carroll, dubbed the
“AMPICO Kid” by his peers. Like many of his colleagues, he lead a
long and productive life, and during an inter view that took place in
1965, made this confident statement:
“I find there is little doubt that, soon, the player and
reproducing piano rolls will be very popular again.”
1. HOLIDAY BY THE FIRESIDE 1928 (3:30)
(Roll No. 7243-U)
This simple and atmospheric medley of three holiday songs was
reproduced by the nimble fingers of an unknown pianist in 1928.
2. CHRISTMAS CAROLS No. 1 (4:25)
(Roll No. 463)
Played by Andrei Kmita (1870-1951)
According to expert David Wallis, Andrei Kmita was actually a
favorite pseudonym of the versatile pianist and prolific AMPICO
artist, Howard Brockway. The list of reproducing rolls he recorded,
under both Brockway and Kmita, is impressively long and varied,
matching in kind his devotion to the technology. In fact, a 1915
edition of Musical America Magazine declared that Brockway
“...champions the contrivance against skeptics as passionately as
through he had invented it himself…” This medley contains holiday
songs once well known yet hardly heard in the present day.
A Christmas Message
A Sprig Arose to Glory
Tomorrow will be Christmas
Rejoice in your Redeemer’s Birth
Once in Royal David’s City
While Shepherd’s watched
3. CHRISTMAS CAROLS No. 2 1928 (6:37)
(Roll No. 2833)
Played by Elsie Holt (1888-1974)
Created in 1928, this medley of Christmas favorites is played with
great gusto by Elsie Holt. Elsie Holt, as pointed out in Elaine
Obenchain’s classic work, A Complete Catalog of AMPICO
Reproducing Piano Roles, (1977), is easily recognized as an anagrammatic
pseudonym for well known composer and pianist, Leslie
Loth. Loth, whose artistry is also featured in Track 11, A Christmas
Eve Fantasy 1928, also recorded under his full name, Louis Leslie
Loth.
Good King Wensceslas
What Child is This?
The Cherry Tree Carol
These Three Kings of Orient Are
Fum, Fum, Fum
4. CHRISTMAS GREETING 1925 (5:30)
(No roll number)
Arranged and played by Adam Carroll (1897-1974)
Adam Carroll, who also recorded under the names of Harry
Shipman and Victor Lane, arranged and made rolls for AMPICO
from 1922 until the late 1930s. In addition to recording nearly five
hundred reproducing rolls, Carroll’s long career included playing
for silent films, Paul Whiteman’s Orchestra, in Broadway Shows,
along with Edgar Fairchild in two-handed performances, and as
accompanist to famed dancer, Fred Astaire. Adam Carroll’s arranging
and playing skills are also featured on Tracks 5 and 7, Christmas
Greetings 1929 and A Grandmother’s Christmas recorded in 1928.
Introduction
Oh, Little Town of Bethlehem
Silent Night
Oh Come All Ye Faithful
Unknown Song
The Second Minuet
Jingle Bells
Unknown Song
5. CHRISTMAS GREETINGS 1929 (9:51)
(Roll No. 7133)
Played by Adam Carroll (1897-1974)
Subtitled Twilight, this medley is comprised of songs not usually
associated with Christmas, arranged and played by Adam Carroll.
A Piano Christmas in the 1920s
Holiday reproducing piano roll performances of AMPICO star pianists.
Romance
Pearls
Love’s Old Sweet Song
Serenatta
In the Gloaming
In the Starlight
6. PARADE OF THE WOODEN SOLDIERS (2:58)
(La Chauve Souris) (Roll No. 202891E)
Played by Herbert Clair (dates unknown)
and Edgar Fairchild, (1898-1975)
Composed by Leon Jessel (1871-1942)
Written by Leon Jessel in 1905 (words by Ballard MacDonald, 1922).
Jessel was a German born musician well known for writing operettas.
Since 1933, The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers, has been a highlight of
the Christmas Spectacular at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall,
and remains the signature precision dance number of the famed
high-kicking Rockettes. This four-handed roll was played by Herbert
Clair and Edgar Fairchild, consummate pianists, who also held key
positions within the AMPICO Company. This roll is one of four they
made together.
7. GRANDMOTHER’S CHRISTMAS 1927 (9:16)
(roll 6418)
Played by Adam Carroll (1897-1974)
This long and varied Christmas roll was played by Adam Carroll.
The Bells
Memories
Long, Long Ago
When you and I Were Young Maggie
Up in a Balloon Boys
Bicycle Built for Two
Sweet Genevieve
The Old Oaken Bucket
Turkey in the Straw
My Darling Clementine
In the Gloaming
Silver Threads Among the Gold
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
The Mistletoe Bough
Bemberge’s “Il Neige”
Jesus Loves the Little Children
(also known as Tramp, Tramp, Tramp from WW I)
Grandfather’s Clock
The Second Minuet
Love’s Old Sweet Song
8. TOY SOLDIER’S MARCH (2:09)
(Roll No. 59921)
Played and composed by Fritz Kreisler (1875-1962)
This playful holiday piece was written by Austria-born composer and
violinist, Fritz Kreisler. Written in 1917, the piece was actually played
by Kreisler himself for this AMPICO reproducing roll.
As Elaine Obenchain points out in her book, “Kreisler was also an
extraordinarily fine pianist, although few people knew it since he never
played in public. Thus his AMPICO recordings provide the unique opportunity
of hearing Kreisler the pianist.”
9. THE FIRST NOEL (3:15)
(Roll No. 63861)
Played by John Tasker Howard. (1890-1964)
This traditional English Christmas carol dating back, perhaps as far as
the 13th century, is played by John Tasker Howard, and is one of only
four rolls that he made for the AMPICO Company. Howard went
onto become a well known music writer and was editor of Musician,
McCalls and Cue Magazines. Howard also ser ved as Curator of the
American Music Collection of the New York Public Library from
1940 to 1956.
10. GESU BAMBINO (4:55)
(Roll No. 62683)
Composed and played by Pietro Yon (1886-1943)
Italian born Pietro Yon, who immigrated to the United States in 1907,
was a composer, concert performer, and musical director/organist of
St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. Yon’s best-known work is
this Italian Christmas Carol, Gesu Bambino (Infant Jesus), written in
1917, replete with Italian lyrics, later translated into English by
Frederick H. Mar tins. Pietro Yon’s skill as a keyboard artist can
clearly be heard in this moving rendition of his own Christmas composition.
11. A CHRISTMAS EVE FANTASY 1928
(Roll No. 6800)
Played by L. Leslie Loth (1888-1974).
A Christmas Eve Fantasy was arranged and played by Louis Leslie
Loth, the artist heard earlier on Christmas Carols No. 2 (Track 3),
under the anagrammatic pseudonym of Elsie Holt. Loth settled in
New York City in 1918, and spent the remainder of his career as a
teacher and composer of no less than 500 pieces of music. This
concluding four-handed roll is as delightful as it is haunting.
Silent Night
Be Gone Dull Care
O’ Sanctissima
Once in Royal David’s City
The Nutcracker and the Mouse King
Boccherini’s Minuet
Over the Chimes
The Bells of St. Mary’s
Gounod’s “Sanctus”
Auld Lang Syne
CREDITS
Recorded, edited and produced by Nick Fritsch
24 bit mastering
Research and notes by Lesley Doyel,
Nick Fritsch and Thomas Venturella
Recorded in New York City, 2007
Photography and graphic design Nick Fritsch
Condenser Microphones by Schoeps.
Apogee Mini-Me Mic preamp
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We gratefully acknowledge important material
found in the following sources:
Elaine Obenchain’s The Complete Catalog of
AMPICO REPRODUCING PIANO ROLLS, 1977,
William H. Edger ton Pub., Rochester, NY
A Catalog of Music for the AMPICO
Copyright 1925, the AMPICO Corp., NYC
The Piano: The Complete Illustrated Guide to the
World’s Most Popular Musical Instrument
By Jeremy Siepmann, Published 1999, Hal Leonard Corporation,
Milwaukee, WI
Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920’s
Frederick Lewis Allen
1931, Harper & Row Publishers, NYC
INTERNET SITES
The Player Piano Ring
http://www.player-care.com/the_ring.html
The Pianola Institute
http://www.pianola.org
Pianola.co.nz
Preserving the music of yesterday
http://www.pianola.co.nz/index.asp
Music For Pianos
http://musicforpianos.com
AMICA - The Automatic Musical Instrument
Collectors’ Association
http://www.amica.org
Player Piano Group
The national society for the pianola
& related instruments
http://www.pianolasociety.com
The Mechanical Music Digest (MMD)
http://www.mmdigest.com |
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